There’s clearly a lean to the left side of things in Lemmy instances, with many people attacking people at the right.

In some cases regarding the climate crisis, there’s people blaming it on capitalism while hinting that communism/socialism are the solution to the climate crisis, because somehow having the state controlling the entire economy will lead to stop CO2 emissions.

A bit from the article:

The best way to protect the environment is to get rich. That way, there is enough money not only to meet the needs of ordinary people, but also to pay for cleaner power plants and better water-treatment facilities. Since capitalism is the best way to create wealth, humanity should stick with it.

Not the first time I’ve heard about this concept, and the more i look into the world the more I agree with it. Being green is kind of a luxury that not many people can afford, and the poorer people are the less they can afford green technology.

  • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    102·
    1 year ago

    "Who We Are

    HumanProgress.org is a project of the Cato Institute""/

    Sounds about right. You’re quoting a right wing rag from a 20 year policy analyst with no practical experience.

    You want to know what poor people can’t afford? Extinction.

    • Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for pointing this out before I bothered reading that long-ass propaganda piece

      Ignore this shite and move on, folks

      • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        1 year ago

        I figured I’d do the diligence since I have to put up with enough Cato for other projects. I didn’t know the authors name, so I had a good laugh at the 3 lines on his linkedin.

    • traveler01@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      When you’re so poor that you don’t know what you’re going to eat tomorrow, or if the money of your wage may run out until the end of the month, will you care much about that?

      • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You are conflating socialism’s view of money, with food. A maximalist socialism would contend money is not for food, give away the food use the money for the stuff you don’t NEED.

        To some degree I agree with that. Any stance that socialism would do anything other than prioritize the well meaning of people over capital is either a compromise (and some of the Nordic models would be an example) or a deliberate straw man, just like the author is building here.

        The idea that you can’t ‘afford’ to feed the world and ideas just like it is the entire reason there’s a socialism in the first place.

          • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            I mean this logic chain is good! But it makes me sad in all the wrong ways.

            Even as someone whose not a vegetarian we devote a shit ton of land to things like feed corn, which I don’t know if you’ve tried, but it’s only barely edible. The amount of yield in terms of nourishment is way tipped towards a subsidized industry around making meat.

            So factory meat farming gets reframed as essential, with all of those questionable ethics in our food supply.

            My contention is that a honest argument should frame around the minimum acceptance to what we could deliver, not are delivering.

            • psud@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I guess I’m lucky in that the meat I eat eats grass that isn’t considered suitable for crops

              a honest argument should frame around the minimum acceptance to what we could deliver, not are delivering.

              That sounds reasonable

              Money really is for anything that needs to be rationed

              An apartment is the basic need. Hilltop cottages need to be rationed as there are only so many hilltop blocks of land

              • cakeistheanswer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Entirely acceptable! I don’t take issue with the concept of money, it’s all the weird hangups and abstractions of responsibility it brings.

                I take issue with the idea that we can’t meet the needs of literally everyone on the face of this earth, and then expand the minimum.

                As far as grass fed, I feel obligated to point out even the grass fed portion could be a crop in that same field, but the yield to calorie count in that decision is the important part to me when it comes to production or pricing, along with not planting acres of stuff essentially inedible humans.

                If you want more horror stories methane production from the combination of deforestation and cattle emissions was unreal to read about too, it made me genuinely queasy and I don’t think it got enough attention.

                But it’s just one industry example of how what we need is going to have to inform our actions. Maybe we have to host all our data centers in Siberia, I don’t know.

                More importantly we have done this before (though nowhere near this scale). Under the banner of capitalism no less! You can have a prevailing socialist ethos to actually stop or change fundamental production of a thing, not extincting the species is a decent cause.

                You don’t have to go back to Jonas Saulk either, CFCs got obliterated from production lines when we spotted the problem, all of which went down during the Regan and Bush years if I remember right.

                Sorry to get wordy, Cato in particular is a sore spot when it comes to watching reasonable arguments get twisted into the windmills they want to tilt at.